Posting BLS Standard Draft to the IETF

The BLS signature scheme was introduced by Boneh-Lynn-Shacham in 2001. The signature scheme relies on pairing-friendly curves and supports non-interactive aggregation properties. That is, given a collection of signatures (sigma_1, …, sigma_n), anyone can produce a short signature (sigma) that authenticates the entire collection. BLS signature scheme is simple, efficient and can be used in a variety of network protocols and systems to compress signatures or certificate chains.

This signature scheme can solve many major scalability problems around blockchains. In particular, using the scheme, all individual signatures of transactions added to each block can be aggregated into one compact signature. Similarly, one can aggregate validator signatures on blocks produced during a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm. Together, these optimizations reduce bandwidth and storage requirement for blockchains.

We’re happy to announce that we recently submitted a standard draft-00 on the BLS signature scheme.

We received some preliminary feedback from interested parties, including major blockchain companies, and we plan to continue updating the draft.